Cornish Pasty Ii (Variations)

The ingredients are: ***** Not Found *****

The recipe yield is: 8 servings

Info: The below are from CORNISH RECIPES, ANCIENT AND MODERN, a pamphlet
cookbook issued by the Cornwall Federation of Women's Institutes.
(The copy I have is dated 1959: the first edition was published in
April 1929: this edition is the 20th.)
MEAT AND POTATO PASTY
Always use fresh steak, potatoes cut small, salt and pepper, flavored
with onion.
RABBITTY PASTY
Use fleshy part of rabbit cut the same as meat, fairly small.
TURNIP PASTY
Turnips and potatoes, sometimes all turnip with a lump of butter or
cream.
Or far bacon may be used.
MACKEREL PASTY
Allow one to two mackerel to each pasty, and clean and boil them in
the usual way. Then remove skin and bones, and lay on pastry: fill
up with washed parsley, and add pepper and salt.
HERBY PASTY
Prepare pastry as for ordinary pasty. Well wash equal quantities of
parsley, bits [an unidentifiable local herb found only in North
Cornwall], shallots, half quantity spinach, prepare some slices of
bacon cut into small pieces and an egg well beaten. Pour boiling
water over the parsley, bits and spinach that have been cut into
small portions, and let stand for half an hour, well squeeze all
moisture out. Put on pastry with the shallots cut finely and the
bacon, pinch up the edges of pasty allowing a small portion left open
for the egg to be added, finish pinching and bake.
STAR-GAZING PASTY
[A variant on another famous Cornish dish, "Stargazy Pie", in which
the fish heads look out at you from under the pie crust, around the
edges of the pie.]
"Mawther used to get a herring, clean 'un, and put same stuffin' as
what yow do have in mabiers (chicken); sew 'un up with niddle and
cotton, put 'en in some daugh made of suet and flour; pinch the
daugh up in the middle and lave the heid sticking out one end, and
tail t'other. They was some nice pasties, too, cooked in a fringle
fire with crock and brandis and old furzy tobs."
Other variants also mentioned (essentially, just cut the ingredients
up and put them in the pasty): apple with cinnamon and brown sugar
(and sometimes blackberries as well): broccoli; chicken; dates;
jam; pork; rice; parsley and lamb.
The cookbook also notes: "It is said that the Devil has never
crossed the Tamar into Cornwall, on account of the well-known habit
of Cornishwomen of putting everything they met into a pasty, and he
was not sufficiently courageous to risk such a fate." And they quote
the well-known poem which describes the basic pasty structure:
"Pastry rolled out like a plate,
Piled with 'turmut, tates, and mate',
Doubled up and baked like fate,
That's a 'Cornish Pasty'."